


Five Forms Fat Louie Took Before He Settled

by aimmyarrowshigh



Category: The Princess Diaries - All Media Types, The Princess Diaries Series - Meg Cabot
Genre: 5 Times, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Daemons, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-23
Updated: 2013-05-23
Packaged: 2017-12-12 17:49:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,253
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/814291
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aimmyarrowshigh/pseuds/aimmyarrowshigh
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Everyone thought that Fat Louie had settled – well, pretty much when Mia was six, even though that wasn’t possible. He’d just been this ugly, squash-faced orange cat with a big, pudgy belly for the last eight years. ... So it was a real shock for everyone when all of a sudden, Fat Louie was this 15-ton wrinkled elephant in the middle of the Plaza tea room, trumpeting and stomping on tea cakes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Five Forms Fat Louie Took Before He Settled

**Author's Note:**

> **Disclaimer** : I don't own anything. All characters, settings, and proprietary language are owned by the author of the work from which this is derived. 
> 
> ORIGINALLY POSTED [HERE](http://aimmyarrowshigh.livejournal.com/32090.html) on 8 February 2011.

** Five Forms Fat Louie Took Before He Settled **

**  
_001._   
**  
Everyone thought that Fat Louie had settled – well, pretty much when Mia was six, even though that wasn’t possible. He’d just been this ugly, squash-faced orange cat with a big, pudgy belly for the last eight years. It’s why he was Fat Louie now and not just Louie. That, and he was just too damned ornery to care what anyone but Mia called him, and since she called him Fat Louie, it must have been okay.

So it was a real shock for everyone when all of a sudden, Fat Louie was this 15-ton wrinkled elephant in the middle of the Plaza tea room, trumpeting and stomping on tea cakes.

“ _Pfuit_ ,” sniffed Grandmere as Rommel shook and hid under the table, “Really, Amelia. Do you not think you are both overreacting just a tad?”

Mia didn’t say anything.

Not only was she a five-foot-nine flat-chested _princess_ with hair shaped like a yield sign, she had to be the only fourteen-year-old girl, like, ever, whose daemon hadn’t settled.

Could she _be_ a bigger freak?

**_002._**  
Michael’s daemon, Pavlova – who was just the cutest little sheltie; sometimes the other guys, like Josh with his iguana daemon, make fun of Michael but, really, there has never been a daemon cuter than Pavlova as far as Mia is concerned… except sometimes Fat Louie, kind of, but that’s more instinctual and not actual cuteness – was gamboling around under the table, nosing at Michael’s shoe.

She was so close to Mia’s foot that she was itching to run off and write about it in her diary. She could practically feel the softness of Pavlova’s fur.

Fat Louie was the fat orange cat again, and Mia was glad – he hadn’t changed in a few months, since her mom told them she was pregnant and Louie flipped out again and turned into this stupid chameleon that they couldn’t find for hours, and Helen’s friend Raindrop who was this daemon therapist said that it was because Mia and Fat Louie felt invisible with the baby coming, but whatever, he was really just hiding behind the toilet hiding shiny things, as usual. Fat Louie was sitting on the table next to the computer while Michael showed her his program.

It was pretty and everything. A castle, kind of like _Beauty and the Beast_. 

_You may not know it,  
but I love you, too._

Fat Louie took flight for the first time in a soaring flutter of white wings, soft as flower petals and stronger than steel, lighter than air.

Mia was mortified and ran out of the gymnasium, but Fat Louie soared close enough to Michael that a wing very nearly brushed his cheek and Pavlova chased a few feet after, calling out to Fat Louie in a chittering daemon language that Michael didn’t quite understand.

Mia was gone. Michael sat heavily on the chair in front of that stupid banner in front of the stupid castle that took him a _month_ to code.

Pavlova climbed up into Michael’s lap and pushed her face into Michael’s chest. _She’s just shy, but you know she loves you._

Michael pulled a white feather out of Pavlova’s ruff.

**_003._**  
Okay, really, that parking meter thing, it could have gone better, but it wasn’t Fat Louie’s fault.

He got a little confused, is all, and it was so overwhelming being in front of so many old guys in wigs, and they _really missed_ Michael and Pavlova and they were so tired –

And okay, a giant spotted great dane whizzing on the Genovian parliament’s mahogany podium?

It was funny! At least all of the talk shows thought it was funny. Except Beverly. She pretended like it wasn’t funny, which was nice of her. 

**_004._**  
Mia worried that something was seriously wrong with her. Or Fat Louie. What kind of fifteen-year-old girl doesn’t have a settled daemon? Obviously, the freakish kind.

Even Tina’s had settled, okay. Wahim was this very cute, very protective clouded leopard who sort of made her look like Jasmine, except in a way less misogynistic outfit. But Tina’s had been the last to settle of the girls Mia knew, except, of course, for herself. But how could Wahim be settled when Fat Louie wasn’t? Mia read like, way fewer Harlequins than Tina did, _and_ she understood them better. She thought.

Although she had totally missed that whole chocolate-dripping-from-the-strawberry thing. But still.

Even Boris had a settled daemon, and he had _dropped a globe on his head_ today. A globe. On his head.

Over _Lilly_. 

And yes, Niccolò was this totally obnoxious mountain goat who ate everything in the G&T room, much to the frustration of the kid trying to invent the thing with the glue, but at least he _was something_.

So when Boris dropped that globe and Michael got all hot Dr. Kovach and Pavlova herded all of the other daemons under the table (or next to it, or whatever) like Lassie so Niccolò could get through but Michael had room to mop up all that blood, Mia had been like, _yes! This will totally be it, Fat Louie, this is so traumatizing and I am so Nurse Abby and I am_ saving a life _right now! Awesome!_

Fat Louie just sat there, on her shoulder, a little curl of a dormouse, and whispered, _this isn’t for us_. 

**_005._**  
It was pretty much perfect. 

The Prom.

The Michael.

The tux on the Michael at the Prom.

Skinner Box getting to play _Tall Drink of Water_ and the look on Lana’s face and really, was there anything better than having a boyfriend in a tux in a band at the Prom?

Yes.

Having a baby brother. Having a tiny baby brother with a golden little glow inside him where his daemon would come from in a few days, and tiny little hands that reached right out for Fat Louie, because he was only a few hours old and that was okay and even if he were older, he was her very own baby brother and he could touch Fat Louie whenever he wanted.

_This is it_ , Mia thought, as Fat Louie’s guinea pig muzzle nudged Rocky’s cheek. _There is nothing in the whole world that can get better than tonight. Not ever._

Michael put his arm around Mia’s shoulders and Pavlova brushed against her ankle and Mia felt their love like the hot flush of drinking Dean & Deluca cocoa after walking down Bleeker in the snow or the burn in the back of her throat eating those cold sesame noodles from Number One Noodle Son, the ones that required two cans of Coke before she could feel her tongue.

Fat Louie waddle-scampered back over to Mia and she picked him up and held him in the crest of her shoulder. _Do you like it?_

Mia rubbed her fingers though his soft orange fur – so much fluffier than when he’d been a cat – smiled at his eager, still pretty ornery, little face. Michael tentatively lowered his hand to Fat Louie’s head and gave him a quick pet between the ears and it’s back again, that hot warm tingling like lying out the Genovian beach sun when she doesn’t have to christen a cruise ship or fish an admiral out of the bay with a harpoon or try to pretend that she didn’t cause an international eco-crisis with the snails.

It’s the closest thing to self-actualization that will probably ever happen to Mia. And that’s pretty amazing.

 

 

 


End file.
